When I was 16 years old I took an architectural drafting class in school. Our major assignment was to take the foundation and structure of an old barn and create an architectural rendering of how best to turn it into a livable home. There was an added incentive to the assignment in that it was a county contest, and the best designs had a chance to win scholarship money towards architectural classes at a local university.
I was passionately obsessed with that assignment. I had that drawing on my mind all day, and then especially at night as I would lay in bed and imagine how I could make the interior of that barn into one of the coolest homes on the planet. I imagined spiral staircases, lofts, balconies, alcoves, hidden rooms - you name it and I probably tried to imagine a way to incorporate that into my design. I would mentally walk through the house and see all the minutest details, feel the things I wanted to incorporate like the texture of exposed wood beams or the chill of the stones from a field stone fireplace, and smell the fresh paint and carpet. Each day in class I would take my ideas and try to fit them into the drawing. Some of them fit (at least in my mind), but most of them did not. That didn't stop me from continuing to think about new ways to enhance my plan all the time. As the assignment deadline approached, I was pretty convinced that my concepts and drawings were the best ones in the class. I prepared my various perspective views on the home (the blueprints) and put together presentation materials to explain to the judges the concepts and the flow of the home.
The judgement/presentation day came and I walked up to the podium and projector with confidence and did my presentation. I knew my design intimately and absolutely loved it. When they announced that I had finished in the top three from my school and that I was moving on to the next level of competition, I was not at all surprised because I KNEW that my design was awesome. But then they sat the three of us down to give us "feedback" on our designs, and what they said to me floored me at the time, but now as I look back on it there was a life lesson in it.
When the judges sat me down they told me that my drawings were not that good! They said that my thoughts and concepts on the flow of the house would not work very well in the real world. Basically they told me that my blueprints sucked! BUT… they said the reason I made the top three was because I was so convincing in my presentation! At the time I wasn't smart enough to grasp the insight in that comment, and when I went to the next level of competition I had lost all belief in my design and flopped in my presentation and finished out of the running.
When I was in my early 30's I had another run-in with blueprints, and once again I became passionately obsessed. My family was growing and my current house felt like it was shrinking, and this time I became obsessed with not only designing a home, but BUILDING one for me and my family. I spent a year researching home layouts and designs and looking for suitable lots to build on. I bought some home architecture software and played around with different layouts and designs that I had seen. I spent hours and hours during the day working on room sizes and layouts and I had a dozen different home designs in that program. At night I would lay in bed and mentally walk through the different designs and engage all my senses in the look, feel, and smell of the various aspects of each of the home designs, and I loved them all. When we finally found a lot in a location we liked, I just had to pick one that would fit the lot dimensions.
Once I had picked the design that would fit the lot, I became unstoppable. I worked out every detail of that design; the dimension of every room, the placement of every outlet and light fixture, the width and style of every door and window. I shared my design with my brother, who is a general contractor and who had the same software I did, and he made minor adjustments to ensure that the house was buildable and structurally sound. But the design was all mine and once again I LOVED it. From the first day that the hole was dug for the home to the day we finally moved-in 3 1/2 months later, I was at the construction site every day working on that house. I was my own general contractor so I supervised the work of all the sub-contractors to make sure they were following my plan exactly. I personally laid almost 800 square feet of tile myself, and pounded countless nails at night. In the end, I would say that 95% of that home was exactly how I had designed (imagined) it - very few on-site changes needed to be made. And I LOVE that house!
If you think about it, every man made thing that you see in this world begins the same way my home designs did - as thoughts or imaginations in someone's head. City sky scrapers come from people who can see complete buildings in their heads before a single yard of cement is poured. And then maybe another person with money who buys into that "vision" and pays to have it completed. New lines of cars are first imagined by people who then get them designed and then someone else sets up the machinery in the factory to produce the new cars.
Going further, if you believe in a creator as I do, you can say that everything we see in this world and this universe began with a thought. The creator imagined every detail of the plants, creatures, and terrain that we see here on earth BEFORE it came in to being. He imagined every planet in our solar system, and every solar system in our galaxy, and everything else beyond that. He imagined you...and THEN he created!
So the other night I woke up with this thought firmly in the front of my brain: If I want aspects of my life to turn out certain ways, I should create a blueprint for my life that depicts the way I want each aspect to be. Isn't it more likely for me to get what I want if I lay it all out on paper, imagining very detail and seeing my life as I want it to be, and then working towards that vision every day?
Now I know that creating a blueprint for my life will be much more "squishy" than blueprints for a home, but I don't think that's the major roadblock to creating one. For me, and I'm guessing for most people, I think the biggest obstacle is doing the hard work to understand what I REALLY want! Let's face it, it's hard to find time to think and create ideas for anything, let alone our lives. I've heard it said that the average person spends more time planning their annual vacations than they do their lives, and I believe it!
So what do I (we) REALLY want? More Money? Sure, that would be nice, and I bet that would be the answer that most people would give off the top of their heads if they were asked the one thing they wanted most in life right now. But why more money? What will that bring us? I think the answer to THAT question will get us closer to understanding what we really want in life. And once we know what we really want and why, what's to stop us from creating a blueprint for our lives that includes all those things? "All roads will get you there if you don't know where you are going." So why not define where you want to go and what the destination looks like in your mind? Why not imagine every detail of your ideal life and lay it out on paper? Do you think you would be more likely to work towards those goals? Do you think you would recognize when you are settling for less than your ideal, or on the flip side will you be more likely to recognize when you are on the right track? I think it's worth a try.
Wish me luck :-)
